One thing I have not escaped from is the MHA Live at Home Scheme. With funding now getting to the critical stage, and the Manager finishing at the beginning of August, crisis meetings are the order of the week.
Yesterday afternoon three of the Committee met with a lady from Together for Regeneration (a Churches Together in South Yorkshire body) to look again at funding possibilities. It all looks quite hopeful in the medium term if we can just keep things going for the short-term! The big problem is not being able to advertise for a new Manager until we have identified a years-worth of funding for the post.
However, Joanne and I then spent about 2 hours double checking that all volunteer costs had been included in the "report back" to SYCF - all the record-keeping, photocopying, cross-referencing, hours of work just to justify £2,500! Why, O why can't some kind person or group just give us the money and say, "use-well, use-wisely but just send a couple of photos of people enjoying what the volunteers do".
Today's Committee was less positive - people are getting tired, fed up of visiting this same crisis every two years, with talk of winding the Scheme up! The next four weeks will hopefully tell us whether or not we have funding available to keep us going for the time being. While you don't want to give in because of all the good the Scheme does for so many older folk, and you don't want to let the Staff down, fighting to keep going is certainly not the easy option!
Yesterday afternoon three of the Committee met with a lady from Together for Regeneration (a Churches Together in South Yorkshire body) to look again at funding possibilities. It all looks quite hopeful in the medium term if we can just keep things going for the short-term! The big problem is not being able to advertise for a new Manager until we have identified a years-worth of funding for the post.
However, Joanne and I then spent about 2 hours double checking that all volunteer costs had been included in the "report back" to SYCF - all the record-keeping, photocopying, cross-referencing, hours of work just to justify £2,500! Why, O why can't some kind person or group just give us the money and say, "use-well, use-wisely but just send a couple of photos of people enjoying what the volunteers do".
Today's Committee was less positive - people are getting tired, fed up of visiting this same crisis every two years, with talk of winding the Scheme up! The next four weeks will hopefully tell us whether or not we have funding available to keep us going for the time being. While you don't want to give in because of all the good the Scheme does for so many older folk, and you don't want to let the Staff down, fighting to keep going is certainly not the easy option!
